Swirls of gas and dust reside in this ethereal-looking region of star formation seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This majestic view,located in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC),reveals a region where low-mass,infant stars and their much more massive stellar neighbors reside. A shroud of blue haze gently lingers amid the stars. Known as LH 95,this is just one of the hundreds of star-forming systems,called associations,located in the LMC some 160,000 light-years distant. Earlier ground-based observations of such systems had only allowed astronomers to study the bright blue giant stars present in these regions. With Hubble's resolution,the low-mass stars can now be analyzed,which will allow for a more accurate calculation of their ages and masses |